The most successful book written by professor Rodolfo Acuña, “Occupied America” represents all that Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne opposed in the Mexican-American Studies program when he launched the attack against it.
In a 2012 interview, Arizona Superintendent of Education John Huppenthal explained why he viewed the book as problematic: The title of Paulo Freire’s book is ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed,’ and so the question is, who is the oppressed? And as we looked at what was going on in the classroom and looked at what was in the materials, we saw they were putting together a Marxian model in the classroom in which the oppressed are the Hispanic students and the oppressors are the white Caucasian power structure.
A New Mexico state representative wants to keep Hispanic history books out of public schools, following in the footsteps of some of her conservative colleagues in Arizona.
New Mexico state Rep. Antonio Maestas proposed a memorial on Monday praising diversity in the state’s curricula and slammed Tucson’s decision to ban seven ethnic studies books from classroom use.
The memorial – New Mexico’s version of a resolution – calls for the state’s school curricula to reflect “a spirit of acceptance and a celebration of different cultures and beliefs,” and encourages the support for the seven books and any others “That encourage New Mexicans to understand their cultural history while empowering a generation of youth who are proud of their heritage.”
Espinoza, a conservative legislator who is herself Hispanic, went off on a rant against the Latino intellectuals whose books were banished, saying they don’t belong in New Mexico schools.
Mexican-American studies scholar Rodolfo Acuña, whose book is a standard text in college classrooms across the country, wasn’t impressed with Espinoza’s characterization of his work as racist.
Source: The Huffington Post